Archinect - News

Editor's Picks # 319

2013-06-11T11:52:00-04:00

Paul Petrunia spoke with Ali Jeevanjee and Ben Anderson from the Flux Foundation, an Oakland based organization dedicated to producing large scale public art via a collaborative process. To this end they installed Sidewalk's End at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, California, back in April 2013.

News
Over at the LA Times Christopher Hawthorne reported on LACMA's unfurled Peter Zumthor's design. Mr. Hawthorne wrote "Still a work in progress, the design is full of gestures that are more speculative, even searching, than fully formed. One crucial element that remains under-developed is how it will feel to walk beneath the museum's raised main floor — and how the underside of the building will be clad or look as seen from the ground. (In such a large, dark piece of architecture it will be important to keep that space from feeling cave-like.) The plan so far has little to say about landscape architecture". Gregory Walker had a few questions "is this really any ...

The race to build the first 3D-printed building

2013-06-06T19:02:00-04:00

Architecture has a habit of adapting its aesthetics to new technologies, whether consciously or unconsciously. Some of the most beautiful buildings of the Industrial Revolution -- the cantilever Forth Bridge, for example -- were designed by engineers, not architects, for example. Architecture quickly absorbed the idea of buildings that reflected their purpose.

3D printing expert lists the reasons why he thinks the technology is overhyped

2013-06-04T20:17:00-04:00

This is the future! And it is, in some respects — it’s going to open so many things up in the world. But that doesn’t mean to say that you will do it yourself or that it will decentralize manufacturing, like the hype seems to suggest. So, no revolution? The main issue lies with raised expectations, build quality, price and usability. So here we go, my list of reasons 3D printing isn’t all you think it’s cracked up to be.

An Insider's View of the Myths and Truths of the 3-D Printing 'Phenomenon'

2013-05-29T15:34:00-04:00

Never before have we had a technology where we can so freely translate our ideas into a tangible object with little regard to the machinery or skills available. Yet just as the microwave didn’t replace all other forms of cooking as initially predicted, 3-D printing will not replace other manufacturing technologies let alone industrial-scale ones for a variety of reasons. It will complement them.

Editor's Picks #317

2013-05-28T19:03:00-04:00

In the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect interviewed Larraine Henning who is currently seeking funding for A Practical Guide to Squatting on Indiegogo. @bawshaw commented "@LandMass - agreed. although the thesis is interesting, this is not out of the box in terms of a career"...Yet Connely Farr disagreed "@ LandMass - yep. you sound like an ass".

In the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect interviewed Larraine Henning who is currently seeking funding for A Practical Guide to Squatting on Indiegogo. Buy a copy of the book “A Practical Guide to Squatting”, and help support independent art and promote the squatting movement! During the interview, she reflected "I think the most valuable thing architecture school bestowed upon me was tolerance and persistence...School taught me to bear conviction and purpose with whatever project I take on, to be earnest and to take judgement in stride"...

@bawshaw commented "@LandMass - agreed. although the thesis is interesting, this is not out of the box in terms of a career. half of my graduating class ended up taking similar paths; more as a product of the recession than anything else. these paths may be alternative to the modern career, but not to architecture specifically. i do applaud her for doing what she believes in".

Yet Connely Farr disagreed "@ LandMass - yep. ...

Cities Of The Future, Built By Drones, Bacteria, And 3-D Printers

2013-05-08T12:43:00-04:00

*This screed is awesomely entertaining and full of cool links, even though it’s almost entirely implausible..There’s also the occasional built-from-scratch Brasilia. So, some people might build a city like this in some central-planned, high-tech rush, before realizing that urban drones, bacteria, and 3DPrinters are fated to become as old-fashioned and pokey as swoopy, Space Age Brasilia is right now. - Bruce Sterling

As part of the Futurist Forum series, Chris Arkenberg composed some vignettes, suggestive of how urban architecture(s) could transform from than the rigid construction methodologies of today, the result being that "Architecture will lose its formal rigidity, softening and flexing and getting closer to the life we see in plants".

h/t Bruce Sterling here

Staples announces they will be the first major U.S. retailer to sell 3D Printers

2013-05-03T13:33:00-04:00

Staples, the world’s largest office products company and second largest e-commerce company, today became the first major U.S. retailer to announce the availability of 3D printers. The Cube® 3D Printer from 3D Systems, a leading global provider of 3D content-to-print solutions, is immediately available on Staples.com for $1299.99 and will be available in a limited number of Staples stores by the end of June.

Autodesk Partners With MakerBot, But Really Wants to Make Its Own Hardware

2013-03-08T19:02:00-05:00

Carl Bass, who’s helmed the $2 billion corporation since 2006, admits that the delineation between building virtual and physical products is eroding, and that has created opportunities for companies who have traditionally focused on developing and selling software. “It used to be that it was this unwritten rule that software companies don’t do hardware, and vice versa,” he says, “but I think the rules are changing…. It totally would be fun. I personally would love it.”

3D printing for the masses with 3Doodler pen

2013-02-21T13:12:00-05:00

The idea behind the 3Doodler is that it takes the core functionality of a 3D printer, essentially an extruder and a heat source, and jams it into a pen-shaped handheld device. Loaded with either ABS or PLA plastic, common feedstock for traditional 3D printers, the 3Doodler "prints" plastic objects by letting you draw them in freehand in three-dimensional space.

With a funding goal of $30,000, the 3Doodler Kickstarter project has already raked in almost 1.2 million dollars from over 13,000 backers. And you're definitely not too late to get in on the funding party—the project has 31 more days to go.

What are your immediate thoughts of architectural applications for the 3Doodler? Let us know in the comment section below.

Foster + Partners works with European Space Agency to 3D print structures on the moon

2013-01-31T13:07:00-05:00

Foster + Partners is part of a consortium set up by the ESA to explore the possibilities of 3D printing to construct lunar habitations. Addressing the challenges of transporting materials to the moon, the study is investigating the use of lunar soil, known as regolith, as building matter.

The practice has designed a lunar base to house four people, which can offer protection from meteorites, gamma radiation and high temperature fluctuations. The base is first unfolded from a tubular module that can be transported by space rocket. An inflatable dome then extends from one end of this cylinder to provide a support structure for construction. Layers of regolith are then built up over the dome by a robot-operated 3D printer to create a protective shell.

To ensure strength while keeping the amount of binding “ink” to a minimum, the shell is made up of a hollow closed cellular structure similar to foam. The geometry of the structure was designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with consortium partners – it is groundbreaking in demonstrating the potential of 3D printing to create structures that are close to natural biological systems.

Simulated lunar soil has been used to create a 1.5 tonne mockup and 3D printing tests have been undertaken at a smaller sca...

Discovery Channel covers Enrico Dini, 'the man who wants to print buildings'

2013-01-26T11:19:00-05:00

The Discovery Channel has aired a segment which gets behind the massive 3D printer D-Shape, designed by Italian inventor Enrico Dini and his company Monolite UK with the eventual aim of "printing buildings." The short film describes Dini's childhood obsession with building sandcastles, taking the viewer through the process of conceiving and designing D-Shape, which uses thin layers of bonded sand to build up its constructions.

Architect aims to build ‘endless’ house using 3D printer

2013-01-18T17:34:00-05:00

Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars from Universe Architecture in Amsterdam has designed a house that is not only created using a 3D printer, but also ‘endless’ in its design. A visitor to the home could walk in a constant path continuously through the house, as it’s designed as a möbius strip

Five tenets of a new kind of architecture

2012-12-16T20:56:00-05:00

So when people look at you know, at the ability to 3D print using a robotic arm, they're very, very curious about the possibility of in the future, printing full scale houses, so I think the media lab and specifically in the Media Matter Group, we don't focus only on efficiency translations. For that, I would open a practice in the commercial world, but that's not the function of this lab...

Neri Oxman founder of the Mediated Matter group at MIT’s Media Lab was recently profiled in a 30-minute segment and interviewed by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. CNN also published a short essay in which Ms. Oxman begins to define a design credo suitable for the contemporary context, wherein the World-as-Machine is replaced by the World-as- Organism. The five components include; Growth over Assembly, Integration over Segregation, Heterogeneity over Homogeneity, Difference over Repetition and Material is the New Software.

As Bruce Sterling noted elsewhere "Looks like Prof Neri’s working up a manifesto there."

World’s First 3D Printing Photo Booth to Open in Japan

2012-11-13T12:14:00-05:00

what’s being called the world’s first 3D printing photo booth is set to open for a limited time at the exhibition space EYE OF GYRE in Harajuku. From November 24 to January 14, 2013, people with reservations can go and have their portraits taken. Except, instead of a photograph, you’ll receive miniature replicas of yourselves.

Phantom Geometry, Winner of the SCI-Arc Gehry Prize 2012

2012-10-23T17:09:00-04:00

Husband-and-wife team, and 2012 SCI-Arc graduates, Liz and Kyle von Hasseln are the recipients of the inaugural Gehry Prize. The couple was recently presented with the prize for their outstanding masters thesis Phantom Geometry, a unique 3D printing method developed in the SCI-Arc Robot House with advisers Devyn Weiser and Peter Testa. This summer, the school had received a $100,000 gift from architect and SCI-Arc trustee Frank Gehry for the establishment of the institute's annual Gehry Prize.

Previously in the Archinect News: Frank Gehry establishes annual "Gehry Prize" for SCI-Arc

Printable house presents new paradigm in eco-architecture

2012-05-04T20:58:00-04:00

Danish architects are building a digitally fabricated house printed from a computer file - a new concept they say minimizes waste and simplifies the building process.

The Free Universal Construction Kit

2012-03-19T12:02:00-04:00

F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab are pleased to present the Free Universal Construction Kit: a matrix of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten* popular children’s construction toys. By allowing any piece to join to any other, the Kit encourages totally new forms of intercourse between otherwise closed systems—enabling radically hybrid constructive play, the creation of previously impossible designs, and ultimately, more creative opportunities for kids.

This is totally brilliant.

The Age of 3D Printing

2011-11-18T11:18:23-05:00

The appropriately named Alice Taylor, founder of MakieLab, a games and toys company based in London, agrees that 3D printing takes away the risk element of mass production, as you can print a product according to demand.

- "Print me an architect"

- "Roger"

Printed Paper Photovoltaic Cells

2011-10-04T12:04:00-04:00

Researchers from Chemnitz University of Technology and Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, in Germany, have presented solar panels that are printed on standard paper. The technology, known as 3PV (3PV stands for printed paper photovoltaics) uses conventional printing methods and standard substrates, like those used for magazines, posters or packaging.

Postage Stamp Architecture

2011-05-11T11:23:23-04:00

I know I have been on a Dutch rag as of late, but where else can you buy postage stamps that honor not just architects, but architecture, and not just timeworn monuments, but experimental work that has not even been built? As a kicker, the stamps are designed so that, if you hold them up to a Web cam, they turn into 3D models floating in front of your screen.